Sadly, because the soil are too polluted by PFAS, it is adviced against to eat your own eggs (by medical authorities) where I live (larger paris aera)
https://www.iledefrance.ars.sante.fr/polluants-organiques-pe...
Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
171–180 of 879 posts
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#172Build vs buy. You can be me and build an in-house flock, pay $100/mo in feed, $500 for a livestock guard dog, $100/mo for dog food, $500 for a solar electric fence, and then $500 for a few coops, etc. It'll pay off before I'm dead, I think! -- right? Right?!
Electric fence? Chickens can fly, my man...
Ummmm.... that is why you clip their wings.
(Though clipping one wing is more fun, that way they flap about in circles).
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#173As someone who once built a large coop [1] then just bought a pre-built shed for the 2nd coop, it's definitely _not_ the _monetary_ solution. You will probably lose money overall for quite some time. I'm still probably underwater. BUT, there are definite upsides: - Chickens are very sweet animals, and are quite intelligent. You will grow to love all the silly things they do. You can pet them, they are super soft, and…
> a large coop
It's large compared to the average, but the longer we've had chickens the more we're convinced they thrive better when given appropriate space (anecdata about average age of our chickens vs all other people with chickens we know), leading me to think something like yours is still too small even for 2 chickens.
For us the minimum is now such that there's at least some of the gras/moss left throughout the year instead of the puddle of mud we used to get. Plus I'm not gonne lie: seeing their (and their ancestors) behavior 'in the wild' it feels morally/ethically better as well. Especially the younger ones are keen explorers: easy to see when let ranging free - they'll go in a radius of like 100m around their nest, but not much further than that. Apart from that one mandatory weirdo obviously.
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We’ve had a lot of PFOA/PFAS contamination and public health advise says to not eat eggs from backyard chickens Where?
Purportedly the Netherlands, but the research was badly performed. KNOWN PFAS contamination was around heavy industry, and yeah, if you live near those regions, maybe don't. Otherwise proceed with scepticism and/or some testing.
Netherlands indeed. We live downriver from known contamination in Dordrecht and around heavy industry in Rotterdam area
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
The ideal flow is investing a lot of time in (say) the first two or three years (three full season cycles gives you a fair amount of exposure) getting the swing of watering, planting, sowing, gathering waste, etc. With any luck you can then transition into barely spending an hour at most a day (on most days) keeping things ticking along .. bursts of weeding, pruning, turning soil as needed and letting the plants do t…
I'm fortunate the prior owners have most things setup. They were older so some of the maintenance around trimming is behind, but I am learning. My problem now is, I don't know what to do with all the oranges. I've been giving them to the local restaurants in town, but I don't think they even want any more. Good problem to have I guess :) Next up is learning how to make marmalade.
You should have a deep chest or big standing freezer away from the kitchen for long term storage .. somewhere cool that it can do fine in for six hours+ if you lose power.
Oranges, yep - marmalade (castor sugar + other stuff, and jars) OR skin | cut away peel and pulp, save juice and freeze for later in the year; drinking ot adding to cakes, etc.
Lazy cooking == slow cookers once every two weeks or so, make a lot of vegetable stir fry and pacage and freeze, chicken and vegetables ditto. If you use tomato stock | paste for these batch meal preps then always get a standard jar and save those in a jar cupboard for reuse for orange jam, fig jame (also look into glace figs, etc).
Keep that up and you'll be living like a 1930's off grid veteran in no time ;-)
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#176Build vs buy. You can be me and build an in-house flock, pay $100/mo in feed, $500 for a livestock guard dog, $100/mo for dog food, $500 for a solar electric fence, and then $500 for a few coops, etc. It'll pay off before I'm dead, I think! -- right? Right?!
And you aren't even factoring in a keeper/guardian, that's a full-time wage.
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#177Illegal in the UK now.
I'm guessing you actually mean "basically 'illegal' because of some regulations"?
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you really like eating chicken, you may end up finding it difficult to eat them again in the future after you develop a bond with them. I used the believe the same, but as I found out on HN, there are a lot of people who won't bat an eye killing animals raised on their own land. Maybe they just never develop a bond with these animals. But then the question should be is it just the "bond" which is holding someone…
Past generations of my family used to name animals that they raised for meat after dishes they could end up in. There are practices people can engage in to distance themselves from the animals they interact with. But also some people who raise animald for meat hire a person to collect them for slaughter in part because of the emotional toll involved. As to your last question.. I think you might be confused? People do…
Harvesting crops is materially different from slaughtering animals, and calorie for calorie, plant-based nutrition involves less termination of life than getting calories from animals (if you're grouping insects and non-animal life into the "forms of life" being killed).
If people don't like killing in general, or killing animals more specifically, they can live a wonderfully health(y|ier) life by going plant-based, be responsible for less killing, and today do it without having to give up the textures and experiences they've be conditioned on.
It's difficult in 2025 to conclude that a person who doesn't choose to eat this way is particularly opposed to killing, in the way that you propose.
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would likely much increase salmonella infections. Which currently appears as a far nastier problem.
How's that? I know American eggs get cleaned and bleached, but that doesn't happen in Europe yet salmonella is not a huge issue. (cleaning eggs also removes some of its natural barriers, making it mandatory to refrigerate them to keep them edible)
Industrial eggs are tightly controlled. Homemade eggs are far more susceptible to infection. AFAIK, scrubbing eggs like in the US is generally a bad idea, and results in the need to refrigerate them.
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#180We had them, then they found PFAS in many backyard eggs. Now most people I know are getting rid of them (in the Netherlands). It’s a shame but I have to say it’s easier to travel and not have to arrange care for the chickens.